Beautiful avalanche poem and gorse control notwithstanding, I can’t help myself—any mention of gorse immediately sends me to Seferis’ last poem “On Gorse”—a short but scathing poetic indictment of the Greek dictator Papadopoulos published three days after the poet’s death. We have gorse profusely growing throughout the surrounding countryside which makes a walk there in early spring pure gorsean delight.

There are places where humans might prefer snow and gorse to be kept, if not always to a strict minimum, then at least somewhat beneath the level of the extreme maximum.

But of course petty human interventions in these areas may not always succeed quite as desired.

Curtis,

When conditions are right, as here on Dartmoor as pictured, gorse becomes dominant, and where this is undesirable for ecological or agricultural reasons, gorse stands are reduced, during the spring growing season, by regular burns like this one. The controlled burning is called swaling. The gorse is burnt off in a controlled manner to allow grass and heather to regrow and feed livestock. In this photo, beaters are working to prevent the fire burning outside the designated burn area.

Once the process was done by cutters. In Hardy's Return of the Native, set in these parts, Clym Yeobright becomes a furze-cutter on Egdon Heath -- furze being the local name for gorse.

In New Zealand, gorse is regarded as a major invasive plant species, something along the lines of short, yellow, scratchy Triffids.

My wife, who grew up in NZ, remembers the gorse as a troublous infestation on the hillsides.

Down there, various biological agents of control have been tried over the past century, none entirely successful nor without drawbacks.

It's lately been found however that when the gorse gets old and "leggy", other sorts of plants can be seeded in, and grow up through it. In thus wise has occurred the experimental revegetation of such areas as that encircling the central remaining patch of gorse here Here native bush has reclaimed the re-seeded perimeter of the gorse patch.

As to the use of composted forest gorse as a peat substitute, as proposed in the interesting linked article, it would seem that, were this to be found practicable, somebody would have a go at it.

But Nature has its own ways of having a go-back.

The point of this post, in brief, was to suggest that some things are anyhow beyond our control.

Angelica's father, as a lad, was an avid mountaineer, and while at a Swiss boarding school, went into the mountains one day to ski with a friend. There came an avalanche, separating the two friends. When A's father got back to the bottom, he learned that his friend had been lost. This was, of course, a pretty traumatic experience.

Sorry to have missed your bright sprig of gorse-defense, stuck here in the holding tank. Let the gorse flourish then, and let us grow to love it, and the snow as well -- after all it's their planet at least as much as it's ours. And probably even more so, when one comes to consider the matter.

This is very timely because we've hit a spot of mild weather, and every couple of days here there's a roar and a rumbling noise, and every time you wonder what the hell it could be, and it's the snow and ice sliding off the 60-degree roof of this house. We're a bit worried it's going to hit one of the dogs; they move fast but it moves faster, I think.

Artur's observation about the relative speed of avalanche and dog does bring home the immediacy of the futility.

Yes, Don, the Avalanche Menace seems altogether more ominous than the Attack of the Killer Gorse.

Though come to think of it those intrepid gorse-torturers themselves might pose something of a threat, if turned loose upon society at large. Why didn't someone think of calling upon them, as the Triffids marched toward London?